Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

Director:

Busby Berkeley

Writers:

Harry Tugend (screenplay) and
George Wells (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

April 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Musical | Romance | Sport

Tagline:

A Homerun Of Laughter, Romance And Fun

Plot:

The Wolves baseball team gets steamed when they find they've been inherited by one K.C. Higgins, a suspected...

Plot Keywords:

Baseball | Beautiful Woman | Dance | Tap Dancing | Sports Team

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Frank Sinatra	...	Dennis Ryan
Esther Williams	...	K.C. Higgins
Gene Kelly	...	Eddie O'Brien
Betty Garrett	...	Shirley Delwyn
Edward Arnold	...	Joe Lorgan
Jules Munshin	...	Nat Goldberg
Richard Lane	...	Michael Gilhuly
Tom Dugan	...	Slappy Burke
Ramon Blackburn	...	Specialty Dancer (as the Blackburn Twins)
Royce Blackburn	...	Specialty Dancer (as the Blackburn Twins)

Also Known As:

Everybody's Cheering (UK)
9 man och en flicka (Sweden) [sv]
A Bela Ditadora (Brazil) [pt]
A Linda Ditadora (Portugal) [pt]
Facciamo il tifo insieme (Italy) [it]
Hendes ni mænd (Denmark) [da]
La bella dictadora (Argentina) [es]
La linda dictadora (Venezuela) [es]
Match d'amour (France) [fr]
Neiti Johtaja (Finland) [fi]
Spiel zu dritt (West Germany) (TV title) [de]
Unser Fräulein Chef (Austria) [de]

Runtime:

93 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #13472) | Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

The idea for the movie was conceived by Gene Kelly, who wanted to pay tribute to the early days of baseball. The movie takes place between 1909 and 1911, as evidenced by Ryan's picture on a new T206 baseball card.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When Ryan and O'Brien are performing their Vaudeville act they sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" which was written in 1908 but they sing the version with the re-written lyrics done in 1927. This film take place circa 1910.

Quotes:

Shirley Delwyn: [to Dennis Ryan] You bad boy, I've got a good notion to take you on my knee.
Eddie O'Brien: You mean over your knee, don't you?
Shirley Delwyn: I know what I mean.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Magnavox Presents Frank Sinatra (1973) (TV)

Soundtrack:

The Hat My Dear Old Father Wore upon St. Patrick's Day

"Sinatra Gets Garrett, Kelly gets Williams"

"Take Me Out To The Ball Game" and "On The Town" were both made in 1949, and they both follow MGM's house formula pretty closely. The same three heroes are in uniform again (Kelly, Sinatra and Munshin), and Betty Garrett is once more pursuing Frankie aggressively, while Munshin is the comedian and Kelly the skirt-chaser.

The action is set in the first decade of the 20th century. Ed O'Brien (Kelly) and Dennis Ryan (Sinatra) are song-and-dance men in the winter and star players for 'The Wolves', a major league baseball team, during the summer. K.C. Higgins (Esther Williams) is a rich and beautiful young woman who buys the club and becomes involved in the personal lives of O'Brien & Ryan.

Baseball is the ideal setting for a nostalgic movie of this kind, and not just because it provides a team matrix in which to slot the male stars. Baseball has a venerable history to it, so the film can be set convincingly in the past. Kelly very nearly pursued a career as short stop with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and 'The Wolves', with their overwhelmingly Irish ethnicity, are fairly obviously based on the real-life Boston Redsox.

Busby Berkeley directs in a restrained, conservative style which suits this middle-of-the-road family entertainment. Esther Williams is terrific as Katherine. She sings, she dances, she acts - and yes, she even gets to swim! Sinatra crooning a romantic ballad to Esther is one of cinema's more unlikely permutations, but it happens here.

The songs are serviceable but little more, though the lyrics are sometimes amusing, pushing metre and rhyme into interesting contortions:

"I've gone and studied up on my astrology, I'm really knowledge-y!"

The only memorable song is the title number, but that dates back to the early 1900's. A clam bake on Giddy's Landing is all-American fun and gives scope for a big production piece. Notice how Berkeley makes the most of a cramped set by filming the chorus line at an oblique angle.

If this likeable but inconsequential film has some enjoyable moments (I liked the unsporting opponent tagging out the unconscious Ryan), it also contains a few curious editing decisions. At the end of the big number at the clam bake, there is a rapid forward-reverse 'hiccup', more usually seen in pop videos. In the latter part of Kelly's solo on the wharf, the scene strangely shifts to a new set. Both Shirley and O'Brien have distracting shadows across their faces in the protracted dancing on the wharf.

The end comes a little suddenly and without proper resolution, and then we get the rather oddly tacked-on vaudeville sequence. It all works, but with considerably less polish than its sister movie, "On The Town".